--and Tomorrow?
by general zero
Summary: Seven of the miracles that help an emotionally-abused Harry Potter believe in the world and himself again. [SEQUEL to: This Is the Other Story]
1. Chapter 1: Prologue Year One

Summary: Seven of the miracles that help an emotionally-abused Harry Potter believe in the world and himself again. [A Companion to _This Is the Other Story_ ]

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Notes: You should definitely read "This Is the Other Story" before reading this, as that piece reveals important details about Harry's pre-Hogwarts childhood. I'm continuing with somewhat of an experimental style here, so do let me know what works and doesnt as far as storytelling goes.

This expansion will, unlike the "This Is the Other Story", include my full headcanons/ships/etc. for this concept, so be ready for things like AU-events/deaths, Severitus, LGBT+ and racial representation, as well as whatever else occurs to me as I flesh out the world.

Please leave comments!

Warning: Expect everything you saw in This Is the Other Story, likely in more explicit detail. First few chapters are pretty chill, though.

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and JK Rowling can take my money any time she wants.

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Prologue: Year One

The problem with pretending everything is fine is that eventually you get good enough at lying that you actually believe it. You grow up learning that the world is one way, and then one day a posh-looking letter slips through the mail slot and suddenly, all the rules have changed and nobody's waiting for you to catch up. You've got to learn on your feet, stay alert.

The point is not that Harry doesn't notice the other mums and dads at the platform hugging their children good-bye, because he does. The point is that Aunt Petunia is telling him to make her proud and Harry is scrambling to figure out how he's going to become a great wizard when he doesn't know how to write with a quill and he's still not sure how to hold his wand. The train is whistling too loudly and the crowd is pushing past too roughly and Harry feels like his life has not ceased it's breakneck pace for even a minute since the letter arrived—and Harry's not even at the school yet.

But Harry is going to make Aunt Petunia proud, so he shakes off the uncertainty like it was never there and buries the image of the other families' heartfelt goodbyes in the graveyard at the back of his mind. It's the place where he banishes everything he can't think about if he wants the world to continue making sense. Like how angry Aunt Petunia got when Dudley interrupted her explanation of the magical world to ask why she never told them before. It all goes into the graveyard, and the longer it stays there, the easier it is to pretend it never happened. He's fine.

The point is… Harry Potter is associated with a lot of graveyards.


	2. Chapter 2: Blaise Zabini

**Chapter 2: Blaise Zabini**

Harry Potter is not sure how he feels about Blaise Zabini.

For one thing, Harry is fairly sure that Zabini only hangs around Harry out of a desire to irritate Draco Malfoy. Zabini, Harry has determined after two months in the same House and classes and dorm with him, is very concerned about being either completely indifferent or completely contrary—sometimes both at once. So Zabini sticks to Harry like glue (or like a sticking charm? Is the idiom different in the wizarding world?) because Malfoy has decided for everyone in first year that Harry should be ignored unless he, Malfoy, deems otherwise. (Malfoy is, generally speaking, a prat, but that's a whole other dilemma.)

On the other hand, Zabini's kinda funny, and having him around means Harry doesn't have to work up the courage to ask someone to be his partner in classes. Furthermore, Zabini has lived in the wizarding world since birth: Harry can watch him for queues and learn how real wizards act. Really, now that Harry thinks about it, they both have selfish reasons for being almost-friends. Maybe it's a Slytherin thing, Harry decides. (Hmm… he'll have to see about giving Malfoy a selfish reason not to be a prat.)

Harry only considers Zabini an almost-friend because in all the books Harry devoured as a child a friend was someone who would stick by you through thick and thin—hell and high water—all the way to Mordor—to infinity and beyond… well, just, someone you could always depend on no matter what. Aunt Petunia always says people like that don't exist and why doesn't Harry try reading something more educational, like non-fiction? Maybe it's true, but Harry's still waiting for a friend to come along.

Back to Zabini, though. Harry almost feels like he should be taking notes, listing pros and cons. Pros: convenient, doesn't stare at Harry's scar. Cons: flighty, borrows Harry's textbooks and draws caricatures of the professors in the margins. Funny ones though.

But if Harry starts writing everything down he might as well buckle down and write that letter to Aunt Petunia he's been putting off. Aunt Petunia would know, certainly, what to make of Zabini. Aunt Petunia is a rock, awesome and imperturbable like Mt. Everest, and she always knows what to do. Harry wants to be just like her when he grows up—and well, maybe funny like Uncle Vernon, too. In order to get Aunt Petunia's opinion on Zabini, though, Harry first has to write to her about him—something that, despite his weekly letters home, Harry has consistently avoided doing.

Part of this is because Harry has the growing suspicion that Aunt Petunia would not approve of Zabini. He talks too loudly and extends his philosophy of indifferent contrariness (contrary indifference?) to their professors and to education in general, despite the House points it costs him. He draws on his arms with a sparkly magic quill he brought from home (it makes the doodles move!) and claims he's going to cover himself in tattoos when he grows up. Sometimes he wears skirts—the same pleated uniform ones the girls wear—instead of trousers and laughs at anyone who teases him about it. (Harry is personally burning with curiosity but considers it none of his business and doesn't ask.)

Another part of it is that Harry is not sure he could do anything to keep Zabini away if Aunt Petunia told him to do so (See: contrariness, above.) So Harry avoids the possible conflict by not writing home about Zabini, and keeping Zabini as much at arms length as he can.

That is, until the incident at Halloween.


	3. Chapter 3: Hermione Granger

**Chapter 1: Hermione Granger**

On the other hand, Harry knows exactly how he feels about Hermione Granger. It doesn't take sharing too many classes with her for Harry (and his whole year, atcually) to realize two things. One: Granger is very, very smart. Two: she is entirely too conscious of it.

Harry believes she's not really stuck-up; she's too friendly (really, seriously, too friendly, almost desperately so). She's very generous with her knowledge, offering help to everyone—even when they don't necessarily want it. That's the crux of the matter, Harry thinks. (He found the word crux in one of his textbooks last week and likes it quite a lot.) Granger doesn't know when and when not to open her mouth.

She's a loner in her own house; Harry almost never sees her with company—unless you counted books of course. She spends a lot of time in the library studying. She is, Harry thinks, kind of a lot like him in those respects. (Harry doesn't count his personal leech Zabini as company.) Harry has not been able to find any further signs of personality in Granger, though. She's not funny like Zabini; she's not really interesting at all. Certainly not someone Harry would consider 'friend' material. Harry knows, however, that Granger is someone Aunt Petunia would approve of in every single way, probably down to the way she organizes her things neatly on her desk before beginning to take notes, and Harry thinks she would make a good study partner.

As much as Harry would like to have a study partner who doesn't try to doodle on him with magic sparkly ink, not to mention a name to prove to Aunt Petunia that he is indeed socializing and adjusting well at Hogwarts, he does not approach Granger. This is because Granger is not only a Gryffindor but also some sort of wizarding untouchable—what the rest of the Slytherins call a "mudblood" in the same tone as Aunt Petunia says "that sort" when referring to the homeless folks who sleep in the park at the end of Privet Drive.

("Don't use that word, Harry," Blaise scolds lazily. "It's terribly common—Malfoy if you keep scowling your face will stick that way—and anyway, labeling someone with their blood status when they've got so many other traits to make fun of is just plain unoriginal.")

Harry doesn't much care about House rivalries or completely understand the wizarding obsession with bloodlines, but he doesn't want to associate with Granger if the price for doing so is waking up in the middle of the night to the wizarding version of a wet-willy or worse from the other boys in his dorm (Zabini included, probably, just for the fun of it). So Harry doesn't sit next to Granger in the library when he goes to study, and he writes her off as a somewhat dull could-have-been, nothing more.

That is, until the incident at Halloween.


	4. Things Harry Doesn't Write Home About

**Chapter 4: Things Harry Doesn't Write Home About, Part 1**

His Fame

Harry catches up to the wizarding world as quickly as he can. He's too shy to do anything but read on the train but that doesn't stop him from attracting attention from people who've heard that the famous Harry Potter is on board. Harry takes note: the Voldemort thing is a bigger deal than he previously thought. People stare at him. To be particular, they stare at his scar. Perhaps that's something he can use later?

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Voldemort

The sorting is a source of a host of new information. Houses are very important social groups: Harry is sure there will be lots of related rules to learn for them. Also, mind-reading hats are a thing, which kind of creeps Harry out. Most importantly though: as big a deal the Voldemort thing is, being sorted into Slytherin is almost as bad. None of the other new Slytherins get the same shocked hush, and awkward, faltering applause that Harry receives, so he supposes the reaction must have something to do with the Voldemort thing. A lot of things seem to trace back to the Voldemort thing, which is frustrating because Harry has yet to get a thorough accounting of it. If only Aunt Petunia weren't a muggle, then she would know, and she'd tell Harry.

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Quidditch

Quidditch is a wonderful, wonderful game. Harry's never really gone in for sports before—that's Dudley's forte—and it's not really the sport that captivates him now. It's the flying. He feels so free, weightless and uncatchable… It's a little ironic, he thinks, that riding a broomstick at reckless speeds and deadly heights should be so relaxing, but it is.

Aunt Petunia's reaction is mixed. Harry thought she was pleased, especially since in his letter explaining how he got on the Slytherin team he minimized the slight rule infraction and stressed the fact that he was going to be the youngest player in a century (and didn't mention at all that his real father had apparently played the game, too). Aunt Petunia even insists on buying him the most expensive broom on the market to help him play better, although she warned him not to let his grades slip even in the slightest. But when Harry gets permission to have his family come see his first game (Professor Snape is uncharacteristically accommodating: Harry takes care to ask him when Professor McGonagall is in earshot and able to fume jealously) Aunt Petunia says "maybe next time"—and on the third "maybe next time" Harry stops writing home about Quidditch.

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Hagrid

Harry runs into Hagrid by accident. He took to doing his reading down by the lake early in the semester, fond of the quiet, and one day the giant squid ("WHYYYYY IS THERE A GIANT SQUID IN THE LAAAAKE!?") snuck a tentacle through the strap on Harry's bag while he was engrossed in Hogwarts: A History and pulled it into the lake. Harry went chasing after it, and Hagrid appeared to drag him out of the water when Harry fell off a steep drop off along the bank. ("Yer gotta bring him a treat, the greedy lil thing, or 'e plays trick on ye.") From that point on, Harry either brings a sandwich from the Great Hall with him as a peace offering or takes Hagrid up on the invitation to stop by his cabin. The gameskeeper is kind-hearted and an incurable gossip, and Harry enjoys stopping by for tea (no rock-cakes), especially as the weather grows colder and studying by the lake is no longer comfortable. One look around the one-room habitation, however—with its hanging furs, cluttered shelves, greasy floor and slobbery dog—ensures that Harry is never breathing a word of his visits here to Aunt Petunia.


End file.
